The Ottoman Cataclysm: Its Beginnings

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The Ottoman Cataclysm: Its Beginnings

Veranstalter
Nahoststudien der Universität Basel, Culturescapes Schweiz, Forschungsstelle Schweiz-Türkei
Veranstaltungsort
Universität Basel, Kollegienhaus
Ort
Basel
Land
Switzerland
Vom - Bis
17.10.2013 -
Website
http://nahoststudien.unibas.ch/archiv/agendaeintrag/article/13044/the-ottoman-cataclysm-its-beginnings-17-19-october-2013/
Von
Hans-Lukas Kieser

The demise of the Ottoman Empire signified a seismic event in world history and had been anticipated since the late eighteenth century. Despite important advances in recent research, a historical narrative that brings together the Ottoman Empire’s various and conflicting dimensions and the multiple historical and religious references involved still misses. The Ottoman cataclysm of the 1910s radically transformed the Middle East without resolving a number of crucial questions that persist to this day. The main political actors after the Balkan Wars, the Young Turks of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) - many of them Muslims from the Balkans - felt embedded in compelling constraints and concluded that a sovereign state of their own could be attained only by a revolutionary "Ottoman war of independence" in 1914. They had lost their hope in the ideals of the 1908 Revolution and in a common future together with their Armenian partners of 1908.

The Basel conference attempts to interpret the early 1910s in an innovative way, from a perspective that includes scholarly Ottomanist and Global History perspectives. It wants to contribute to an overarching, well-networked, and comprehensive narrative of the Ottoman 1910s. It considers conflicting dynamics, identity struggles, and projections of the future that made both probable and improbable the cataclysm that began for good in August 1914. It contends that defeat in the Balkan Wars and the simultaneous reform conflict in the eastern provinces brought the CUP to want a new war. It focuses therefore on the eve of the First World War and on three main theatres: the Balkans and Western Anatolia; the eastern provinces; and Palestine. It questions the perspective of an Ottoman future among different groups in Palestine; explores the demise of Ottomanism linked to the Balkan Wars; and discusses what became the main issue of the Eastern Question in Western diplomacy in 1913: the reform of the eastern provinces related to the Armenian Question, or, as a few contemporaries called it rightly, the Armeno-Kurdish Question.

The conference has three panels and two public lectures. For a binding registration for the full program, please send as soon as possible a message to Mr Noureddine Wenger at n.wenger@stud.unibas.ch. Please note that places at the panels are limited.

Programm

Thursday, 17 October 2013

18:15 Public lecture (Kollegienhaus, lecture hall 120)
Erik Jan Zürcher (University of Leiden): Was the Ottoman cataclysm unavoidable? Young Turk attitudes at the time of the constitutional revolution

Friday, 18 October 2013 (Kollegienhaus, “Mehrzweckraum“, ground floor)
9:00-9:30: Welcome and introduction (Hans-Lukas Kieser & Maurus Reinkowski)

Panel I: Demise of Ottomanity: watersheds in the Balkans and Anatolia, 1912-14

09:30-10:30 Chair: Natasa Miskovic (University of Basel)
Y. Dogan Cetinkaya (University of Istanbul): Ottoman “atrocity propaganda “during the Balkan Wars
Eyal Ginio (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Negotiating identities during a time of war: The Judeo-Spanish press in the Balkan Wars
10:30-11:00 Break

11:00-12:30
Emre Erol (University of Leiden): Macedonian question” in Western Anatolia: The ousting of the Ottoman Greeks before the World War I and the case of Foça
Murat Kaya (University of Basel): The Western imperialism and the formation of the Young Turk mindset
Respondent: Kerem Öktem (Oxford University)
12:30-14:00 Break
14:00-15:30 Chair: Benjamin Frithjof Schenk (University of Basel)
Vangelis Kechriotis (Bosphorus University, Istanbul): From the Balkan Wars to World War One: the first historiographical narratives in Greek
Ebru Boyar (METU, Ankara): The impact of the Balkan Wars on Ottoman history-writing
Respondent: Méropi Anastassiadou (INALCO, Paris)
15:30-16:00 Break

Panel II: Struggle about “Ottomania” in Palestine, 1912-14

16:00-18:00 Chair: Benjamin Frithjof Schenk (University of Basel)
Dominique Trimbur (Centre de recherche français de Jérusalem): An eternal Ottoman Empire? French views on the destiny of Turkey at the eve of World War One: the case of Palestine
Yuval Ben-Bassat (University of Haifa): Petitions from Palestine in 1912-1913: A turning point in local support for the Empire?
Michelle Campos (University of Florida): The Ottoman sickness and its doctors: Imperial loyalty in Palestine on the eve of World War I"
Respondent: Paul Dumont (University of Strasbourg)

19:15 Public lecture (Kollegienhaus, lecture hall 120)
Hamit Bozarslan (EHESS, Paris): Syria 1913-2013

Saturday, 19 October (Kollegienhaus, “Mehrzweckraum“, ground floor)

Panel III: Ottomanity saved? A focal point of reform 1912-14: the Eastern Provinces

9:00-10:30 Chair: Tim Epkenhans (University of Freiburg im Breisgau) Vahé Tachjian (Houshamadyan, Berlin): Village and town life reconstructed, potential and fissures made visible
Nilay Özok Gündogan (Denison University, USA): Can the ‘ahali’ speak? Petitions from the Ottoman East, 1909-1914 Respondent: Hamit Bozarslan (EHESS, Paris)
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Chair: Tim Epkenhans (University of Freiburg im Breisgau)
Mehmet Polatel (Bosphorus University, Istanbul): The effects of land disputes on the reform question in the Eastern Provinces
Thomas Schmutz (University of Zurich): The German role in the reform discussion of 1913-1914
Respondent: Erik Jan Zürcher (University of Leiden)

12:30–13:00 Final discussion

Kontakt

Noureddine Wenger
n.wenger@stud.unibas.ch

http://nahoststudien.unibas.ch/archiv/agendaeintrag/article/13044/the-ottoman-cataclysm-its-beginnings-17-19-october-2013/
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